Gear software for design and analysis

Gear and gearbox manufacturer Excel has developed software that the company says quickly determines maximum product parameters for gears needed in various industries. The Excel-Lent software is said to save engineers a lot of time when designing pinion and gear or a gearbox.

With minimal input the Design portion of the software will calculate the number of teeth in the pinion and gear, DP or Module, face width etc. required to transmit the power, within a few seconds. The calculated data can be exported to the “Analysis” section for complete analysis with clicking the “Transfer Data “ tab on screen. Calculated capacity will be very close to the required power.

Also, the company says the Excel-Lent software’s dimensioning program is versatile. Non-standard center distance or matching a new gear to an existing gear can be done by clicking the indicated option. The material tables provided have all the commercially available materials listed, with heat treat and mechanical properties to allow the user to choose any gear material from the list to fit their need.

The analyze screen from the software.

“Although commercial software has long been available in the gear industry, it has been too expensive or too complicated to be used by engineers without specialized gear design knowledge, ” says Excel president N.K. Chinnusamy. “The software is specifically designed with a user-friendly interactive input screen providing defaults and options in accordance with the AGMA 2001 standard (American Gear Manufacturers Association).” The users of Excel-Lent software can easily navigate through the input screens to edit, analyze and produce reports on the optimum gear and gearbox design for various industrial and other applications.

The analyze screen from the software.

He continues that the software is not designed for any specific industry. It can be used for machine tools, heavy materials handling equipment or even the wind turbine industry. For the wind turbine industry, for example, the designer needs a full understanding of all the operating loads on the gear members to arrive at the required power rating.

The key calculations performed are the AGMA power rating and load calculations, including bending strength geometry

factor (J) and pitting resistance geometry factors (I). Output from the software is a single page of data printed in a format that is easy to read and interpret. Other commercial software typically prints five or six pages of information, which may be confusing to most design engineers unless they are gear experts, according to Chinnusamy.

The company says that users of Excel-Lent need not be familiar with AGMA standards to use the software. Those who are not gear engineers can also benefit from the gear engineering knowledge embedded in the software package.

A demo

The Excel Gear website now includes a demo to show the simplicity of the Excel-Lent Gear software. The demo takes a few minutes to download, and then runs through the numerical design of a spur gear needed to carry 350 hp at 1250 rpm and do so for 10,000 hr. The selections should be familiar to most mechanical engineers and include values such as the materials, mesh ratio, and safety factors. Results appear quickly in a green field at the screen bottom. A detailed sheet with many more of the gear characteristics also appears quickly after hitting the Calculate button. This information can be transferred to the included analysis program, with one button push, to calculate load and life values. Interpreting an analysis will take some experience. Values found here include yield, bending, and contact stresses for the gear and pinion. Lastly, a Dimensions program provides the inspection data for the gears. Three input screens from the software appear here. The company is also announcing a cost of $995 for first time users.